I was browsing around on Amazon a couple weeks ago and I came across these beauts. The Dean Markley vintage re-issue strings, regular gauge. I used to play these things back in the 90′s and I absolutely loved them. They maintain great tone and last longer than other strings I’ve tried. The best part is the regular gauge are sufficiently heavy to fit my taste (.10 tops, .46 bottoms). I picked up a set and they are just like I remember. The only thing missing is the Dean Markley sticker that came in every pack. That was a little disappointing. In any case, a great set of strings. I might try the light top heavy bottoms next time, but those may be a little heavier than what I want to put on my Strat.

This past weekend I finally completed the LED modification I began on my guitar. It’s something I started in (I think) November of last year. It really didn’t take that long, but I was just too lazy to put the finishing touches on it. A couple hours of work late last year got me some LED’s installed under the pickups of my Ibanez RG 220 and a 9 volt battery adapter hanging out the back. It worked and looked pretty sweet, but I had to leave the back cover off the guitar so I could get at the adapter. Furthermore, in order to turn the lights off and on I had to disconnect or connect the battery altogether. As of this past weekend, I am able to satisfactorily call the project complete.

I’ll describe what I did in a little more detail. I removed the strings on the guitar (it was time to change them anyways) and then unmounted the pickup brackets from the top of the guitar. I bought eight red LED’s at Radio Shack and made two vaguely rectangular circuits of LED’s and then tied them to some lead wire. I fed the wire through the same holes the pickup leads came through, then tied them together, put a resistor in place to cut back the current from the battery, attached a 9-volt battery terminal to those and that was that. It didn’t look quite right when I tested it. The light was too direct and obscured. I searched around the Internet a little bit and found a nice article someone else did with this same project and his solution was to cut out two pieces of plastic and layer them with some translucent Scotch tape to diffuse the light. So in the pickup cavities on my guitar, there is a nice layered deal of LED’s, plastic, and pickup on top of that.

That’s the way it’s sat for the past 3 or 4 months. I finally got tired of having the back cover off and having a 9 volt battery hanging out the back, AND having to disconnect the battery if I wanted to use the lights at all. So I got off my butt and stopped at Radio Shack again and bought a sub-mini toggle switch. I got out my drill and made a nice 1/4″ hole in the guitar right between the volume and tone knob, cut one of the leads from the 9 volt terminal and tied the resulting wire into the switch. I then fed the front of the switch through the guitar and bolted it on, voila! Glowing red pickups that I figure increase my shredability by at least 37.9%.